A little bit of advice. The Mosow hexes, put fort units on them with toe set at 50% it will stop degredation & may even increase the fort size. You should be getting or have got the Moscow Defense zone & you can attatch the forts to it. also attatch your reserve army HQ's to military districts this will allow transfer to fronts to be done without waisting any AP's. Manstein63

Why Shaposhnikov is front commander? and Zhukov is in Stavka? Shaposhnikov has admin rating 9, and historically he has to be in HC. Ar you sure Zhukov's 9 in infantry will affect normally from such level?

That's interesting. I have no idea what the quantitative effect is of having different leaders at different levels. For example, how many defensive reserves are triggered by an initiative 5 front commander compared with an initiative 6? I just take all this on trust, although it can be important if you're facing an AP crunch and you have to decide whether to form corps, raise new divisions or kick Kulik out of the Vorenezh Front HQ. Also, if all the fighting is in the south, does it make sense to move Stavka to, say, Stalino?

Regarding Stavka leaders, that's really a job for Vasilevsky, I'd have thought, if he can be preserved and promoted to a sufficiently high rank.

Vasilevsky is good if you are on the offense and admin is at a premium.

But for defensive warfare there is nothing like Zhukov running the show. He is the ultimate backstop for the Soviets due to his amazing initiative rating. Soviet initiative ratings generally are horrible and having him there will dramatically increase your chances of defensive reaction. Note these rolls go all the way up the chain of command and more often than not they will fail at the army and front levels thanks to poor initiative all around. You only have a bare handful of leaders with good initiative, nowhere near enough to address this concern at the army level. This critical deficiency must be addressed at the very top.

Note this very same rule applies to the Germans when they are on the defense: they want an initiative superstar in OKH. On the offense, they want a strong admin leader. And their initiative situation is much better than the Soviets.

When you are defending reserve activations matter more than admin, your supply situation more than sufficient for Zhukov to handle, his 7 admin rating is pretty decent in of itself. You have to keep the German guessing, and reserves are a major force multiplier. They introduce a major level of uncertainty in his attacks, and force him to be more conservative lest reserve activations start turning combats into holds. Fewer attacks means slower operational tempo and that's what you need on the defense: to slow the enemy down.

Never forget reserves can activate for offensive operations also. That can be very handy in certain spots, like cracking the river next to Leningrad using 1st Corps, and have the entire 4th Pz Army sitting right behind them in reserve. Use for the Soviets 1943+ cracking river lines, and have a lot of beefy infantry corps that can reserve into a fight can make a difference. It makes more sense for usage on defense, but keep the offensive nature of reserves in mind.

I had a number of reactions to this. One was surprise: I've never seen a move quite like this before. In fact, I assumed there was a rule prohibiting the Germans from going onto Finnish territory. Another reaction was relief: the envelopment would have succeeded if I hadn't happened to move 4th Shock Army into reserve behind 7th Army - its the one assigned to South Urals in the diagram above. A third reaction was that this looks wrong - surely the pincers will be cut off in the mud turns to come?

After a Stavka conference, it is decided to leave the semi-encircled divisions where they are and try to snap off the German pincers. This is done with some ease ...

Meanwhile, on the other end of the front, I try to distract the Axis with a little counter offensive. My newly formed tank corp give the Germans a taste of our Russian spunk, and we make a few pockets of our own. Note the Crimea Front, which was wiped out at the end of the Barbarossa fighting, slowly being nursed back to life.

These are strange and troubling moves by Blubel. On the one hand, my instincts are that he has blundered - firstly by giving up the advantage of surprise, which, as Bomazz has shown, can be extremely effective; secondly by attacking so far to the north, where the going is hard and the only strategic prize already taken; thirdly, by failing to close the pocket. On the other hand, if the pocket were to close in the future, and those 40 or so divisions were to surrender, it would make Berlin a tough objective to take before April 45.

These are strange and troubling moves by Blubel. On the one hand, my instincts are that he has blundered - firstly by giving up the advantage of surprise, which, as Bomazz has shown, can be extremely effective; secondly by attacking so far to the north, where the going is hard and the only strategic prize already taken; thirdly, by failing to close the pocket. On the other hand, if the pocket were to close in the future, and those 40 or so divisions were to surrender, it would make Berlin a tough objective to take before April 45.

Whatever next?

Unlike Sapper, Bomazz did the right thing by attacking during spring clear turns

BUT

like Sapper, Bomazz made the blunder of spreading out his mobile divisions.

This has made it very easy to reopen pockets.

IF he would have put all his units in same area he could have easly cut off 10-15 divisions with a solid pocket 2 to 3 hexes wide or pushed you back in one wide 3-5/ deep 5-10 hexes area. This forsing a retreat and gaining space.

Just a plain lack of 42+ exp. Spreading out mobile units is ALWAYS an epic fail for GHC in 1942.

Why he attacked in north at all I have no idea, even if you are forsed to pull out this area is so easy to defend from 42-45 for GHC.

Bomazz weakest area is Tula south. D+Z town area is a 43 disaster waiting to happen.

from Oka north is very very easly defended by GHC from 42-mid to late 44, the hard area is Oka south as terrain sucks defending. The south is key for GHC getting a draw vs good SHC players. Getting a minor win is simply not going to happen.

It looks like Blubel has jumped the gun here, Spring clear turn deep penetrations are always dangerous.With the benefit of hindsight a better strategy may have been to push just North of Moscow during the Spring clear turns to draw deep defenses from the North and then to launch the main attack on the first clear turn of the Summer campaign.

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ORIGINAL: hooooper

These are strange and troubling moves by Blubel. On the one hand, my instincts are that he has blundered - firstly by giving up the advantage of surprise, which, as Bomazz has shown, can be extremely effective; secondly by attacking so far to the north, where the going is hard and the only strategic prize already taken; thirdly, by failing to close the pocket. On the other hand, if the pocket were to close in the future, and those 40 or so divisions were to surrender, it would make Berlin a tough objective to take before April 45.

I think there is some merit to 1942 Northern offensives, but as you say, surprise is the key.It has to be a quick smash and grab.The advantages are that it's not expected, the buildup can easily be hidden and counterattacks against the panzer cordon are less likely to succeed because of the good defensive terrain.Capturing swaths of good terrain in the North also makes the Axis player's job much easier from 43 onwards.

If Bomazz would have attacked in south with everything you would have been forsed to react to his strong openning and he could have stayed on offensive until October 42. But instead SHC is already countering moves and cutting off GHC spearheads.

Bomazz can still recover from this strategic blunder as it is spring, but its a big boon to SHC.

Turn 49 After my attempts to force the encircled panzer divisions to surrender all fail, with heavy losses, Blubel resumes the offensive in the next clear turn. Showing astonishing resilience, the Germans manage to close the pocket, thereby cutting off the whole of the Red Army north of the Valdai Hills.

Soviet complacency gives way, in a suitably historical fashion, to blind panic. Are we going to lose the war in the most unlikely sector imaginable? Moscow Defence Zone reserves, of which there are about three armies worth, are sent north on rails to try and break the German fingers that are tightening around our windpipe. Meanwhile, North-west Front takes advantage of the fact that the the centre of the encircling line is being held by Panzer regiments to punch a ten mile wide lifeline to the best part of two fronts.

Meanwhile the whole of the VVS's transport fleet is made ready to airlift supplies to the trapped troops - who do have one airbase to draw supply from, if necessary.

In the south, I can take advantage of the northern deployment of the best panzer divisions to make ground in the centre, but the Red Army doesn't have enough poke to really worry the Germans. Meanwhile my offensive on the Black Sea Coast is nipped painfully in the bud.

I have to take my hat off to Blubel: he has pulled off a move that I didn't think possible. The mark of a great player. However I can still win the race to open the pocket .. there are reserves available, and I can shortly start forming infantry corps, which are, of course, the best antidote to a panzer division.

Another really exciting AAR. You are starting off summer of 42 where you left off in 41, playing right on the edge. Does not look to me that you will win the battle of encirlement in the north. I think Bludbell will have that group isolated on your next turn. That terrain is very bad and some rivers to deal with. I thought your 41 was a massive and interesting battle. Your counterattacks inflicted real losses and you retained some very important ground. And the Soviet fought very hard and took very nasty losses for his geographical success.

A very easy blizzard it looked like. I just went through one with Bomazz and it seems we had more fighting. Your army looks worn down. I see alot of 1 cv infantry divisions. Is that why you did not attack alot in blizzard? Good luck here. Gonna be excitiing to see how much you can extricate. I never would have seen that coming. How did he supply those panzers way up there int he north.

vandev.

p.s. I see you are having a rematch with Bomazz in a response you made in an Arty CV thread. How offensive are you in that blizzard?

Early '42 can be a problem for the Russians. March snow is always risky and it's easy to underestimate German bounceback - I know because I've done it twice.

The other 'problem' is TOE changes which suck up all manpower replacements for many turns. 42a inf div TOE is really good for defence esp. vs tanks . It also essential to rotate units out for morale growth/restoration so all the infantry divs (apart from recent arrivals) are ideally 3 or 4 CV with morale of 50 and 90%+ TOE, . Much harder to chomp through than 1s and 2s. Russian army should be transformed in combat power between march and may. Even in the 5 mud turns the army OB should go up by 500K.

Same goes for mud and snow turns in '41 too. You need to get most other than the newbies to morale 45-50 and full CV. TOE unhelpfully goes up as blizzard starts so if don't start at max you can get to unready status rather quickly.

Frankly that rotation/rebuild 10+ hexes away needs doing continuously but these are the 2 key times. May be less essential with national morale bug fix, but rotation out is a lot quicker.

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Does not look to me that you will win the battle of encirlement in the north.

Well, I have to try, of course. I will shortly have the ability to form rifle corps and the AP boost from the activation of the Vorenezh Front to form them with. Also, the Germans will have difficulty supplying and reinforcing those thin pincers. And I may have time to deploy more armour and cavalry. So, the situation is critical, but it's not quite time to give in to despair.

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I thought your 41 was a massive and interesting battle. Your counterattacks inflicted real losses and you retained some very important ground.

I tried to fight in the south, and probably should have retreated a turn sooner than I did - a mistake that I can't seem to stop making. On the other hand, Blubel over-pressed once or twice and lost a couple of panzer divisions. After the disaster in the south I fought a very conservative blizzard and invested most of my APs in reconstituting the Crimea Front. I still think this was the right strategy, as the Red Army did have a certain solidity to it after the April mud was over.

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I see you are having a rematch with Bomazz in a response you made in an Arty CV thread. How offensive are you in that blizzard?

As I expected, Bomazz played a much better game in the rematch and I played a worse one. In particular, and rather embarrassingly, I botched the defence of Leningrad by failing to reinforce it after he sent the AGC panzers north. So, they were available to be sent south in August, and he succeeded in making two huge encirclements before the mud, and took Rostov (although not Moscow/Tula/Vorenezh). This meant that I had to fight hard to take back the south, and an exciting struggle for Stalino resulted, which the Germans eventually held. We're half-way through the April mud now, and it's looking fairly even - the Soviets are about the pass the magic 6m men mark.

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that northern gambit looks downright dangerous

Yes, it's not clear what the Germans could do next if it fails. It's likely that they'll lose the initiative, after which it would be long trip back to Berlin. Not sure it will fail, though.

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The other 'problem' is TOE changes which suck up all manpower replacements for many turns.

Yes, I was impressed by Gingerbread's analysis of this, which doesn't make lots of sense. A bit like it taking the Soviets a week to produce and deploy 15 150mm artillery pieces. But the German's have their gripes with the production system too, of course.

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Frankly that rotation/rebuild 10+ hexes away needs doing continuously but these are the 2 key times. May be less essential with national morale bug fix, but rotation out is a lot quicker.

Yes, I've never bothered doing that before - it does take a lot of looking under counters and fiddling around. But given the desperate state of my present games, and after reading this post, I've started doing it with some enthusiasm ....

During the mud turns, the enormous influx of Soviet reserves was able to punch a second hole through the wafer thin German encirclement and isolate a Panzer division and a half. Because the Germans were operating in a one-hex-wide corridor with exceedingly thick walls, it was impossible to bring up enough force to free the trapped units. So Blubel waved them an affectionate farewell and continued his summer offensive. It went something like this:

The other main effort was expended in the infantry offensive north of Tula (which I continue to find a bit odd), and the isolation of a good part of the Vorenezh Front, which I have no difficulty in understanding.